So I played Fish for the first time at FNM (being a primarily a Standard player) and went undefeated with 33 people. I want to think I know how to play the deck effectively, but I still have lots to learn.
The main question is Dismember vs Vapor Snag. What are some reasons to play one over the other?
And for reference I was playing an old Nikachu list with the full set of Dismember in the main. I played against the mirror, Bogles, burn, Amulet Bloom, Esper Gifts, and Jund. I really liked having Dismember since no Fish player even plays it here and throws people off, but againt the mirror, burn, and Bloom I was really wishing for Snag instead.
Hello. I'm the person that got 5th at the same event also playing fish. In my main I run 2x snag and 1x dismember with a second dismember in the side. I really like snag as it is a card like flickerwisp where it can do a surprising amount of work. It can save lords or let you recast master of waves to get back your tokens. It is true that when used on opponents things it only gets rid of them for a single turn(unless it is a token) but sometimes you only need something gone for a single turn. Also that 1 loss of life it does can be extremely relevant. I won my last match against some version of junk because vapor snag ignores worships ability besides the 2 snag I had nothing that could deal with a resolved worship in the 75. Like the post above me mentioned dismember is actually easier to cast than snag sometimes because sometimes you have games where you only draw mutavault and cavern. In the end it really depends on what people are playing and personal preference.
In general, I would say that mainboard Dismember vs. Vapor Snag depends almost entirely on how much Burn and Zoo you expect to face. The more popular those decks are, the less appealing Dismember is (for obvious reasons). I'd also say Vapor Snag is the more versatile spell overall (since you can save your guys with it and it can help you win life races by having their attack against you result in a net -1 life), but Dismember has the "hard removal" aspect going for it. For waht it's worth, I'm in a perpetual struggle to make room for Dismember in my sideboard, but I always run mainboard Vapor Snags.
This may be a silly thing to fret upon, but I play Magic through art most of the time. I'm having trouble deciding on which art of Lord of Atlantis I want in my deck. I made the banner with the 7th Edition Lord of Atlantis as I have always though the 7th Edition art is sick with a Merfolk with a giant sword with an army of Merfolk behind him to match the flavour text. Although lately I've been wanting the Time Spiral version with the Alpha art because it is more colourful, yet the art is very simple and doesn't really make him look good in my opinion mostly from his spear. So Basically I'm deciding between dynamic vs. simple art. What does this 'school' think?
This may be a silly thing to fret upon, but I play Magic through art most of the time. I'm having trouble deciding on which art of Lord of Atlantis I want in my deck. I made the banner with the 7th Edition Lord of Atlantis as I have always though the 7th Edition art is sick with a Merfolk with a giant sword with an army of Merfolk behind him to match the flavour text. Although lately I've been wanting the Time Spiral version with the Alpha art because it is more colourful, yet the art is very simple and doesn't really make him look good in my opinion mostly from his spear. So Basically I'm deciding between dynamic vs. simple art. What does this 'school' think?
I prefer the original Lord of Atlantis because the imagery stands out. The Lord in 7th edition might as well be a chameleon. I really dislike artists that that create images that blend in perfectly with the background so, that at a distance when playing the game, it doesn't look like anything at all.
I opt for the Timeshifted one, because it has the Merfolk creature type. I've had enough people ask me whether he's a Merfolk that it would drive me batty to have to explain it more.
I like 7th ed because it just looks BA, but I agree he does not stand out against the background as much as he should. The Timeshifted one is easier to use/for opponents to read and understand.
Merfolk needs to transition into a meta-game deck. We know the targets (Twin, Affinity, Jund). We know how to beat those decks or need to develop them.
First, if you are playing strictly blue, well, you're out in left field now. There is no way you have good game vs Affinity. There is no real only Blue answers (including Recall) that reliably beat Affinity.
Second, modern is a sideboard hate format. The most powerful hate cards are in white.
Third, there is zero drawback to running the U/w manabase. Only benefits. You can run fetchles white for almost 100% reliable mana for your sideboard cards without ruining your maindeck.
The meta card that I think that wrecks the whole modern environment is not Chalice of the Void anymore. I think (and know), it is;
Read the card. Think about it. It shuts off or cripples any activated ability. That means, fetches, TWIN(!), Planeswalker activations (yes, Jace's loot ability is included), most everything that Affinity is trying to do, Tron searches, etc etc. The only deck that basically is not hit by SF is, Amulet. (I suspect a ban of some sort incoming anyways).
Closing; if you are going to a big GP, consider your chances of winning or doing well. Consider your chances with a brutal maindeck hate card. It hits our Vials pretty hard as well, so maybe it's a sideboard card? I have played with it main (no Vial, more counters) and sideboard and the card is just great.
Twin and Jund are decks we can be outright favored against with the proper sideboard using a mono-U shell. Hurkyl's Recall helps a lot against Affinity. The W splash hurts our consistency overall, and Suppression Field (which has friendly-fire interactions with Cursecatcher as well as Æther Vial) is not good enough a card to make me want to risk the loss in consistency. I'd consider the splash for cards like Worship, which gives our bad matchups tons of problems (provided you survive to that point, of course), but not for Suppression Field.
Twin and Jund are decks we can be outright favored against with the proper sideboard using a mono-U shell. Hurkyl's Recall helps a lot against Affinity. The W splash hurts our consistency overall, and Suppression Field (which has friendly-fire interactions with Cursecatcher as well as Æther Vial) is not good enough a card to make me want to risk the loss in consistency. I'd consider the splash for cards like Worship, which gives our bad matchups tons of problems (provided you survive to that point, of course), but not for Suppression Field.
I agree with this. I would also like to mention Suppression Field slows down Mutavault use as well and it really doesn't seem like where we want to be. I still think the Mono Blue version has enough options to make the white splash not really worth it (to the disagreement of many players here). Besides, the UW version isn't even that exciting vs something like Affinity because you are STILL favored to lose the first game to it.
I actually think that the WU proponents are a very small minority of Merfolk players. It just so happens that they're a vocal one, and that gives the impression that there are more of them. I also totally forgot about the Mutavault nonbo - that makes Suppression Field even worse. Gonna have to say nay on that card.
Additionally, I'd like to announce that the Budget Options, Æther Vial uses, and Tier 2 matchups sections are now complete. I'll soon add Cody_X's example of a budget deck, as well as matchup information for other named decks. Barring any other suggestions, the primer will then be complete. I'd appreciate feedback on anything that's currently up.
Hey, I've gotten a lot quieter about u/w fish recently.
Suppression field is a strong card, and I do think fish can make use of it. The major issues are: if you're playing white, you can do things like cosi + ghost quarter, or white sygg, both of which nonbo with suppression field.
You could play a more controlling build, and maybe even include ghost quarters, and accept that its a bit of a nonbo, but worthwhile because of its potential power in land screw, and just go full in on the hate, which might be reasonable. Its another thing I'd like to test.
The other white hate card no one bothers to test with is Leonin Arbiter. We all saw what Wescoe did with it yesterday.
It hoses Burn (it is 4-color deck), Scapeshift, Amulet, Trons, all decks with fetchlands (Zoo, Jund, Junk, Grixis, Twin...), while we don't care.
We have Vial for "getting" them and we can also play Path and Ghost Quarter for some resource management (those 2 cards are nice with him).
Drawbacks are not being Merfolk and enabling their Paths.
There is a question I wanted to ask and this is probably the only place where it can be answered since many players have history with it.
I am talking about Blue Devotion from past standard.
Why is there no port to Modern? Other then being a bye to Merfolk.
Whoever played it when it was legal, knows it destroys green and/or red decks (nice place to be if you look at the number of Forests and Mountains).
With 12 flyers it can stop Affinity, Weird gets a better replacement in Harbinger of Tides, Specter can become Shorecrasher Elemental if needed, Pongify can become Snag or Dismember, there are some nice improvements for Modern play (Annex, Azami, Cryptic Command, Kira, Sower, Spreading Seas, Sygg, Teferi, Threads of Disloyalty, Vendillion Clique, Venser, Wistful Selkie :)...).
It has evasion, good tempo, great mana, it can be unblockable, it can go wide, resilient, we still play a ton of Merfolk like Tidebinder, Harbinger, Master of Waves, Thassa and Mutavault. And it has Judge's Familiar (multi-format all-star, multiple PT winner, what more could you want?!).
I find it hard to believe that no one even tried. Please enlighten me.
If anyone is willing to prove that UW is playable at all, go for it. Come back when there are ANY results.
Anyone is welcome to debate it for forever but results are results. Mono blue is a consistent tier 1 deck, UW has absolutely no consistent results. The land is clunky and painful.
I honestly think that UW is playable but my own playtesting doesn't make me believe it is better at all than mono U. The power of the white cards only compensate for what you lose in lands that shock you or come into play tapped.
I'm sure it's been brought up before, but I haven't tried it since Harbinger of the Tides came out. Rapid Hybridization might be good to consider again since we can bounce tokens so easily. Just planting a seed in the forum, maybe it'll sprout...maybe not.
The good blue cards effectively hate each other!
Delver, Snapcaster, Cryptic and now the new Jace are no good with Devotion based strategies. They want spells, Devotion wants permanents with Pips.
I never mentioned Delver, Snapy or Jaces, just like they are never mentioned for Merfolk. Don't know what they have to do with this. Command is just an easily castable power card, one or two copies would suffice, if at all.
Legendary ****s us over! Our best cards are legendary. 4 Vendillioncliques would make life so much easier, but we can't. the moment thassa and clique hit the board we might have 6 dead draws :(.
True again, but Monoblue Devotion has about 100+ potential powerful cards to put in the deck. No one said we should have 4 Thassa and 4 Clique.
And then we have the identity crisis. Flying vs. non-flying. Pretty much all our creatures fly, but then we don't have enough of them to ONLY play fliers.
What exactly demands flying from all creatures? This is not Faeries nor was flying what made U Dev powerful in old format (12 flyers and 16 nonflyers).
Manacosts: We lack a good 1 Mana aggressive drop, and we lack a good 2pip flier.
Raptor and the owl were always serviceable, I see nothing wrong there. Deck doesn't need 2-drop flyers (with Seas, Tidebinder, Harbinger and possible counters, two-drops are solved).
Now we can circumvent that with playing either Faeries or Merfolk, but guess what, both of them are better without a devotion theme. I came into modern at the time Monoblue Devotion was everywhere, and i tried really hard to build a devotionequivalent in Modern, but no matter what, Merfolk just looked stronger.
Faeries and Merfolk serve different purpose than this deck. U Devotion can't lose to aggresive strategies like Zoo or Burn (also better game against Affinity), while former tries to outgrind Island decks.
That subforum is trying to build Wizards or Faeries or Grand Architect or Illusions or Blue Affinity. It has nothing to do with what I propose. That is the reason why I am trying to gather audience here.
Hello. I'm the person that got 5th at the same event also playing fish. In my main I run 2x snag and 1x dismember with a second dismember in the side. I really like snag as it is a card like flickerwisp where it can do a surprising amount of work. It can save lords or let you recast master of waves to get back your tokens. It is true that when used on opponents things it only gets rid of them for a single turn(unless it is a token) but sometimes you only need something gone for a single turn. Also that 1 loss of life it does can be extremely relevant. I won my last match against some version of junk because vapor snag ignores worships ability besides the 2 snag I had nothing that could deal with a resolved worship in the 75. Like the post above me mentioned dismember is actually easier to cast than snag sometimes because sometimes you have games where you only draw mutavault and cavern. In the end it really depends on what people are playing and personal preference.
Legacy: Merfolk U; Shadow UB; Eldrazi Stompy C
Pauper: Delver U
Vintage: Merfolk U
Primers:
Standard: BG Golgari Midrange
Modern: U Merfolk GWUBR 5 Color Humans UBW Esper Gifts GW Bogles
U Merfolk | GR Tron | WUR Jeskai Control | WBG Abzan Company
EDH:
G Ezuri, Renegade Leader, Fighting for Rivendell
WU Brago, King Eternal, Long Live the King
WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon, Worship the Dragon
Legacy: Merfolk U; Shadow UB; Eldrazi Stompy C
Pauper: Delver U
Vintage: Merfolk U
Primers:
Standard: BG Golgari Midrange
Modern: U Merfolk GWUBR 5 Color Humans UBW Esper Gifts GW Bogles
U Merfolk | GR Tron | WUR Jeskai Control | WBG Abzan Company
EDH:
G Ezuri, Renegade Leader, Fighting for Rivendell
WU Brago, King Eternal, Long Live the King
WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon, Worship the Dragon
A new art though would be fantastic.
First, if you are playing strictly blue, well, you're out in left field now. There is no way you have good game vs Affinity. There is no real only Blue answers (including Recall) that reliably beat Affinity.
Second, modern is a sideboard hate format. The most powerful hate cards are in white.
Third, there is zero drawback to running the U/w manabase. Only benefits. You can run fetchles white for almost 100% reliable mana for your sideboard cards without ruining your maindeck.
The meta card that I think that wrecks the whole modern environment is not Chalice of the Void anymore. I think (and know), it is;
Suppression Field
Read the card. Think about it. It shuts off or cripples any activated ability. That means, fetches, TWIN(!), Planeswalker activations (yes, Jace's loot ability is included), most everything that Affinity is trying to do, Tron searches, etc etc. The only deck that basically is not hit by SF is, Amulet. (I suspect a ban of some sort incoming anyways).
Closing; if you are going to a big GP, consider your chances of winning or doing well. Consider your chances with a brutal maindeck hate card. It hits our Vials pretty hard as well, so maybe it's a sideboard card? I have played with it main (no Vial, more counters) and sideboard and the card is just great.
Legacy: Merfolk U; Shadow UB; Eldrazi Stompy C
Pauper: Delver U
Vintage: Merfolk U
Primers:
I agree with this. I would also like to mention Suppression Field slows down Mutavault use as well and it really doesn't seem like where we want to be. I still think the Mono Blue version has enough options to make the white splash not really worth it (to the disagreement of many players here). Besides, the UW version isn't even that exciting vs something like Affinity because you are STILL favored to lose the first game to it.
Modern UMerfolkU
Legacy UMerfolkU
Standard XWhatever's GoodX
Additionally, I'd like to announce that the Budget Options, Æther Vial uses, and Tier 2 matchups sections are now complete. I'll soon add Cody_X's example of a budget deck, as well as matchup information for other named decks. Barring any other suggestions, the primer will then be complete. I'd appreciate feedback on anything that's currently up.
Legacy: Merfolk U; Shadow UB; Eldrazi Stompy C
Pauper: Delver U
Vintage: Merfolk U
Primers:
Modern UMerfolkU
Legacy UMerfolkU
Standard XWhatever's GoodX
Suppression field is a strong card, and I do think fish can make use of it. The major issues are: if you're playing white, you can do things like cosi + ghost quarter, or white sygg, both of which nonbo with suppression field.
You could play a more controlling build, and maybe even include ghost quarters, and accept that its a bit of a nonbo, but worthwhile because of its potential power in land screw, and just go full in on the hate, which might be reasonable. Its another thing I'd like to test.
The other white hate card no one bothers to test with is Leonin Arbiter. We all saw what Wescoe did with it yesterday.
It hoses Burn (it is 4-color deck), Scapeshift, Amulet, Trons, all decks with fetchlands (Zoo, Jund, Junk, Grixis, Twin...), while we don't care.
We have Vial for "getting" them and we can also play Path and Ghost Quarter for some resource management (those 2 cards are nice with him).
Drawbacks are not being Merfolk and enabling their Paths.
There is a question I wanted to ask and this is probably the only place where it can be answered since many players have history with it.
I am talking about Blue Devotion from past standard.
Why is there no port to Modern? Other then being a bye to Merfolk.
Whoever played it when it was legal, knows it destroys green and/or red decks (nice place to be if you look at the number of Forests and Mountains).
With 12 flyers it can stop Affinity, Weird gets a better replacement in Harbinger of Tides, Specter can become Shorecrasher Elemental if needed, Pongify can become Snag or Dismember, there are some nice improvements for Modern play (Annex, Azami, Cryptic Command, Kira, Sower, Spreading Seas, Sygg, Teferi, Threads of Disloyalty, Vendillion Clique, Venser, Wistful Selkie :)...).
It has evasion, good tempo, great mana, it can be unblockable, it can go wide, resilient, we still play a ton of Merfolk like Tidebinder, Harbinger, Master of Waves, Thassa and Mutavault. And it has Judge's Familiar (multi-format all-star, multiple PT winner, what more could you want?!).
I find it hard to believe that no one even tried. Please enlighten me.
Anyone is welcome to debate it for forever but results are results. Mono blue is a consistent tier 1 deck, UW has absolutely no consistent results. The land is clunky and painful.
I honestly think that UW is playable but my own playtesting doesn't make me believe it is better at all than mono U. The power of the white cards only compensate for what you lose in lands that shock you or come into play tapped.
Twitch Channel - https://www.twitch.tv/moontimedweller
MODERN - Mono-Blue Merfolk & 7-Forest Goblin Charbelcher
LEGACY - Ruby Storm & Burn
PAUPER - Zombies, Bogles, & Burn
I never mentioned Delver, Snapy or Jaces, just like they are never mentioned for Merfolk. Don't know what they have to do with this. Command is just an easily castable power card, one or two copies would suffice, if at all.
True, but she is a beater and we have other evasion. Unblockable is just another ability we can use, like scry.
True again, but Monoblue Devotion has about 100+ potential powerful cards to put in the deck. No one said we should have 4 Thassa and 4 Clique.
Sorcerer is irrelevant for the deck, no need to mention his faults.
What exactly demands flying from all creatures? This is not Faeries nor was flying what made U Dev powerful in old format (12 flyers and 16 nonflyers).
Raptor and the owl were always serviceable, I see nothing wrong there. Deck doesn't need 2-drop flyers (with Seas, Tidebinder, Harbinger and possible counters, two-drops are solved).
Faeries and Merfolk serve different purpose than this deck. U Devotion can't lose to aggresive strategies like Zoo or Burn (also better game against Affinity), while former tries to outgrind Island decks.
That subforum is trying to build Wizards or Faeries or Grand Architect or Illusions or Blue Affinity. It has nothing to do with what I propose. That is the reason why I am trying to gather audience here.
Basilisk Collar? $5.00
Shooting down a baneslayer angel? Priceless